JACOB JENSEN

Jacob Jensen is a product designer with the greatest number of honours and awards in the world. His works are timeless and many of them are on permanent show in museums across the globe. Born in 1926 in the Copenhagen suburb of Vesterbro his career started first as a slaughterhouse apprentice and then an apprentice upholsterer in 1942 at the age of 16. Working later in his father's small furniture shop he began his design career by designing beds, chairs and other furniture. One of the chairs designed by him was awarded a prize and encouraged by this achievement and his father, he applied for admission to Denmark's School of Arts, Crafts in Design. He successful achieved his ambition and was accepted three years' later.

This was supplemented with an early association with Bernadotte & Bjørn's drawing office (1954 - 1959), the first industrial design drawing office in Denmark. He became assistant professor of industrial design at Chicago University (1959-61), partner in the ID firm Latham, Tyler & Jensen, New York/Chicago (1959-61) and set up his own company in Denmark in 1958. Jacob Jensen's ability to work with shape was quickly combined with his skill at finding solutions to problems of a technical nature.

He has created more than 500 industrial products for Danish and foreign companies. His best known works include product design for Bang & Olufsen A/S, among others Beolit 600 (1970), Beogram 4000 (1972) and Beocenter 9000 (1986), an astronomical clock for Max René, office chairs for Labofa A/S, Comet telephone for Standard Electric Kirk (today Kirk Telecom A/S) (1976), toys for LEGO, kitchen appliances for Gaggenau Hausgeräte GmbH, watches, telephone and the Jensen-One cars for Max Rene Ltd and loudspeakers for Dantax A/S.

Awards include the IDSA Award (1978), the Thorvald Bindesbøll Medal (1983), International Design Award, Osaka (1985), Good design, Osaka (1986 and 1989) and the ID Classics Prize (1990). He published his memoirs 'Anderledes, men ikke mærkeligt' ('Different, but not strange') in 1997.

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